Masterclass: Storyboarding

On May 3rd, 2021 I shared a brief workshop masterclass on how to write, create, and hone Storyboards for the Theater Department and students at the University of Wyoming.

At this time, I had been consulting with the department and ended mentoring student to help create a contemporary rendition of Shakespeare’s “As You Like it”. This was one of the methods that the department was looking to adapt the work to continue to have students gaining the necssary practice and application for the actors, set designers, costumers and more during the COVID pandemic, as risks were still high at the time.

It was exciting to get to compare similar needs— the use if the script/screenplay— and how we create markups to understand where we may want to put cameras or place characters on the screen is incredibly similar to what is needed to create staging for the director. While these students were no longe thinking about the work in only a theatrical format, beginning to share how storyboards can help break down the scene and utilzing the camera as an “eye” to help direct interest was important.

Theater is not often focused on the “small” moments— so there was some gap between these needs and converting theater-production needs into a video format, many small moments we may use ( such as b-roll) to create drama, tension, or relief are not utilized in theatre in the same ways.